A new acquisition for Princeton’s Historic Maps & Western Americana collections, Coronelli and Nolin’s Le nouveau Mexique… is described in Philip D. Burden’s The Mapping of North America II (Raleigh Publications, 2007) as “the most momentous map of the American south-west published to date [1687] and would remain seminal for decades to come” (Burden, 307). The primary importance of the map is the depiction of the Rio Grand, which is accurately described as flowing south-east and discharging into the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of California: “La Riu du Nort tombe dans le golfe de Mexique, et non pas dans La Mer de Californie.”

The map also prominently features several Indian pueblos, including Acoma, Nambe, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, and Taos, as well as Apache and Navajo tribes.

The first printed state of the map has a regretful omission in the date, which is printed as “168.”

Wheat’s Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540-1861 (Institute of Historical Cartography, 1957-1963) dates the map as 1685, while Burden suggests a later circa 1687 printing. A second state of Le nouveau de Mexique… did not appear until in 1742.